Very nice read!

This really resonated with me:

> I would skim the documentation for the command to run, or the configuration to enter, only to get error messages in response. Then a period of frantic searching and trial and error would follow. Until I finally got it right. Once it worked, I reread the original documentation and saw that the answers were right there all along. Crystal clear. And yet somehow it did not register the first time. This happened on multiple occasions.

haha thanks this seems so oddly familiar. setting up openbsd on a vps slowly. each problem as you write, stumped, searching frustratedly. only to find the answer staring me in the face in the docs i definitely tried to read the first time round :')... getting slowly more into the 'read it slowly and take notes'. litterally every issue :D. they say these man pages / docs are the best. they really are. maybe there is some learning curve to transition from bad documentation to good documentation...

either way, thanks for writeup, definitely going to reread it better and maybe it will save me some fallingonmyface soon!

If you forget about the security focus that only started when Theo de Raadt got pwned by N3tBSD h4xx0rz, it is one of the best OS experiences the interwebs has to offer.

It has gotten a lot friendlier than it used to be too. It used to be that you had to build your own -CURRENT every week if you wanted to have something akin to an update.

Nowadays, you can run a binary update every six months and you even get binary patches for the errata in the interim. And if you need to patch your kernel you can grab it from GitHub.

I had a small board from 10 years ago I wanted to turn into a VPN and I just had to boot it, connect the serial adapter, download a new bsd.rd, and it was fresh and ready to go again.

It's sad that they had to let VAX and other legacy platforms go with the switch to clang, but, if some hardware has ever worked in OpenBSD, it is likely to keep working decades from now.

Sent from my OpenBSD M2 MacBook.

Very good read, made me want to try OpenBSD again after a story similar to yours.

thanks for the good read.

I used Amsterdam BSD two years back to scratch my itch. It was a no nonsense, perhaps perfect way to try out OpenBSD.

The thing keeping me from using OpenBSD/FreeBSD on my new production app is I don't know what kinds of issues I may run into compared to Debian stable on a fairly beefy dedicated server.

My new app has dependancies:

a) http reverse proxy. No problem

b) Java 21 / Clojure 1.12. JDK 21 virtual threads is a must. Unclear what level of support/quality can be expected on OpenBSD or FreeBSD.

c) Postgres 17 (TimeScale)